


Mandrakes and Muckrakers

by notkingyet



Category: Ripper Street
Genre: Canonical Character Death, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-26
Updated: 2013-12-26
Packaged: 2018-01-06 05:52:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1103179
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notkingyet/pseuds/notkingyet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>H-Division's least-favorite journalist, as seen through the eyes of a telegraph boy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mandrakes and Muckrakers

Harry had been a telegraph boy for six months when Luke took him aside and offered him a chance to more than double his pay.

Luke directed him to talk to one of the other boys for more information. The advice he got from Vincent had given him a fairly clear picture of what would happen.

"Make sure he goes slow," Vincent had said. "Get on top if you can. If he wants your mouth, don’t bother trying to take the whole thing until you’ve had some practice. Just use your hands for the rest."

It sounded simple enough. Nothing Harry hadn’t already done with lads his own age.

Twenty minutes after he’d entered the Harlequin, the job was done. As Luke had promised, it paid more than Harry’d ever seen before in his life. And it was a damn sight more fun than delivering bloody telegrams.

 

* * *

 

The job wasn’t all roses. There were times when a man wouldn’t listen when Harry told him to slow down or ease up, and he had to grit his teeth through the act and pass up on the next few jobs until walking straight didn’t take quite so much effort.

Then there were the ones who didn’t want Harry to talk to them, not even to say as much as “good morning”, and could hardly bring themselves to say what they expected him to do. They reminded Harry of the people who read their telegrams without acknowledging they’d been delivered by a breathing human being.

Harry knew his face wasn’t much to look at, but he liked to think of himself as something more than a warm body. There were moments when he wanted to take a trick by the shoulders and shout, “I’ve had your bloody cock in my arse, the least you can do is look me in the eye.”

On the flip side of that coin were the men who looked too deeply into Harry’s eyes, who swore love and devotion to a level beyond what Alexander and Haphaestion ever experienced. This, being entirely one-sided, felt somewhat uncomfortable. (For that matter, while Harry had met a couple of Alexanders in his day, he’d never heard of any Haphaestion.)

"Milk it," was Vincent’s suggestion when Harry asked his advice. "Take ‘em for everything they’re worth."

Harry tried that, but found he lacked the skill for insinuations and had to resort to flat begging, which sat uneasy on his pride. A cocksucking whore he might be, but damn it, he didn’t need anyone’s charity.

 

* * *

 

There was a social separation between those who only delivered telegrams and those who got sent out on the special jobs. The latter stuck together after work, comparing tricks and laughing over the ones they had in common as they went drinking or wandering London in packs or pairs. The pairs caught some jeering from the other boys for “working after hours”, doing the same things with each other for free that they’d have charged a trick extra for, but it was all in good fun.

Harry probably would’ve paired off himself if he’d found any of his co-workers romantically inspiring. As it was, he felt they made better friends. Sometimes very handsy friends, but friends all the same. He and Vincent had something like that going for a while until David Goodbody showed up at the GPO.

"What’re you laughing at?" said Vincent as Harry followed him out of the offices, assignments in hand.

"Your face," said Harry, not bothering to stifle his chuckles now that they were out in the open air, away from Luke’s scolding about maintaining a professional working environment.

"Oh, my face, is it?" said Vincent, spinning on his heel and walking backward to pull a face at Harry. "Nothing wrong with mine that wouldn’t look worse on yours."

"I’m not the one mooning over the new lad," said Harry with a sly grin.

"Mooning?"

"Yessir."

“ _Mooning?_ ”

"Mm-hmm."

"I most certainly am not _mooning_ ," said Vincent, turning away from Harry again. "If you must know, I was casting a critical eye over his uniform. He hasn’t learnt how to wear it right."

"So naturally the solution is for you to tear it off him," said Harry.

He ducked Vincent’s swing with a laugh and ran off to deliver his telegrams.

Harry never actually saw Vincent tear off David’s uniform, but when they arrived for work side by side, sharing glances out the corners of their eyes and holding back unprofessional smiles, it was fairly obvious it’d happened.

 

* * *

 

 

The Star was the paper-of-choice among the telegraph boys. Harry never questioned it, just read the rag along with everybody else.

About a month after his first frig job, he found out why.

That morning’s job was a man Harry’d never had before; on the short side, with a slight build, dark hair slicked back, heavily-lidded eyes, sharp features, and a moustache that wouldn’t have looked out of place on the devil himself. Like many of Harry’s customers, he carried himself with confidence, the kind that came from having a career that inspired bootlicking in one’s inferiors.

Harry didn’t particularly feel like bootlicking that day.

"Telegram for you, sir," he drawled from the doorway of one of the Harlequin’s identical little rooms.

"Is that all?" said the man, not turning to see who it was, far too busy squinting into the mirror as he unpinned his scarf.

"If that’s all you want," said Harry.

The man caught Harry’s eye in the mirror, then turned and looked him up and down, his eyes finally coming to rest on Harry’s face.

"And what do you want?" he said.

The question should have come off as demanding. But the man’s tone was soft and curious, as though he were genuinely interested in the answer.

If Harry were honest, he might have told the man how all he wanted after a long day of running all over this stupid, smoggy city was a hot meal and a soft bed. If he were feeling ambitious, he might wish for a warm bath to go with it.

"You," Harry said.

The man smirked.

"Liar," he said. "What’s your name?"

"Harry."

"Close the door, Harry."

Harry did so. “And yours?”

"Fred," said the man. "Freddie to my friends." He gestured toward the bed. "Care to sit?"

Harry found that he did.

Freddie put a hand on Harry's thigh. Harry responded with his own hand on the back of Freddie's neck. The corner of Freddie's mouth twitched upward briefly before he leaned in.

Freddie’s kisses were long and languid, his caresses gentle, and his tongue talented. He was happy to go at whatever speed Harry demanded, and made sure Harry enjoyed their union as much as he did.

"Don’t suppose you’d condescend to see me again?" he said, lounging on the bed with a cigarette as Harry put his uniform back on.

Harry’s standard answer was that was out of his hands and he’d have to ask Luke.

To Freddie, he said, “I’d like that.”

Freddie grinned.

 

* * *

 

 

“‘Course I know Freddie,” said Vincent later that afternoon as he and Harry loitered outside the GPO waiting for David to get off duty.

"Well, what d’you think of him?" said Harry, hands in his pockets, studying Vincent’s face.

"I like him," said Vincent with a shrug. "Doesn’t ask for anything queer or try to stiff you on your pay. Gives you extra if you’ve got a lead for him. And his paper’s a good read."

"His paper?" said Harry.

Vincent looked at Harry as though he were an idiot. Vincent wore that look a lot.

"The Star," he said.

Harry blinked at him.

"Freddie Best?" said Vincent. "Chief reporter for the Star? Biggest thorn in the coppers’ side since Ripper himself?"

"Is one of us?" said Harry, his voice high with disbelief.

"Don’t know if he’s ever delivered a telegram in his life," said Vincent, "but he’s a pansy, that’s for sure."

After that revelation, Harry never missed an edition of the Star if he could help it.

 

* * *

 

 

One July morning, Vincent brought an orange to the office. He sat at the table, peeling it while Luke shouted out assignments, and passed off a slice to each boy who got up to leave. It was a laugh, watching Luke get redder in the face as the orange got smaller and smaller, and the taste of the section Harry’d received had been welcome on his tongue in the summer heat.

Harry told Freddie all about this as they lounged on the bed, six inches apart on account of the sweltering air, sharing one of Freddie’s cigarettes. Freddie chuckled along with the story, more than Harry’s reenactment warranted, but it was flattering all the same.

"I probably won’t see another orange till Christmas," Harry said off-hand.

Freddie’s reply came in the form of a sympathetic hum and a kiss on Harry’s shoulder.

The next time they met, four days later, Freddie presented Harry with an entire orange all his own. He fed it to Harry wedge-by-wedge, licking the juice from where it dripped on Harry’s chest. At the end of their appointment, he produced a second orange, and pressed it into Harry’s hand as he pressed his lips to Harry’s own.

"Didn’t realize you were listening," Harry said.

“‘Course I was listening,” said Freddie. “I’d be a sorry excuse for a reporter otherwise.”

 

* * *

 

 

"What’s wrong?" Freddie asked in October, pulling back from the second kiss Harry had failed to respond to in as many minutes.

"Nothing," Harry said. It wasn’t a lie, not really. Landlords raising rent and threatening to kick him out on the street just as the weather turned colder than a bloody polar expedition had nothing to do with Freddie. Not his fault that Harry couldn’t put aside his fury at the unfairness of it all and be there in the moment with him.

"Tell me," Freddie said anyway, putting an arm around Harry’s waist and his lips on the side of Harry’s neck.

So Harry told him. As he did, he watched Freddie’s face turn from bemused concern to righteous rage.

"I’ll fix it," Freddie said when Harry’s tale was done, sealing the promise with another kiss.

"How?" Harry wanted to ask, but then Freddie did something clever with his tongue on Harry’s ear and it became very difficult to care about rent disputes for the next hour or so.

When Harry left the Harlequin, it was with a significantly thicker envelope than usual. Checking it when he arrived back home confirmed what he’d expected; Freddie’d made up the difference between the old rent and new. Harry still didn’t want to hand it over to the rent collector, but at least he had the means to do so.

Next week, the Star’s front page featured an exposé on greedy slumlords. Harry’s landlord was never named, but next time the collector came ‘round, his rent was back down to a reasonable sum.

 

* * *

 

 

“‘A little touch of Harry in the night,’” Freddie murmured one evening as they lay together, slowly trailing his fingers down Harry’s arm.

"He’s quoting Shakespeare," said Vincent the next day after Harry told him about it, in a tone that implied Harry was the greenest boy in the whole GPO. Then he added, "Bloody hell, he’s quoting Shakespeare? He’s besotted, all right. Let me know when he starts in with the sonnets."

The sonnets had started two weeks prior, but Vincent didn’t need to know that.

It didn’t matter whether Harry told him or not, anyway. The truth of the situation became more than a little obvious when Freddie stopped fucking any of the other telegraph boys.

"Two minutes," said Otto, holding up two fingers to ward off any confusion. The four of them—Otto, Vincent, David, and Harry—were gathered around Vincent and David's sorry excuse for a table, a literal soapbox. A shared bottle of wine moved around it clockwise. "He just asked me if I had any story leads for him, I said I hadn’t, sorry, and he sent me on my way. Didn’t even take off my uniform."

"He still pays, though, yeah?" said Vincent, one arm thrown casually over David’s shoulder.

"Sure, but—"

"So what’re you complaining about?"

"I’m not complaining, I’m only saying! Does he think I’ve got the French disease?"

"It’s not you, Otto," said David, leaning his head against Vincent’s. "He’s not fucking me anymore either."

"Then who is he fucking?"

Both Vincent and David turned to look at Harry, in a synchronized motion that was both fluid and a little eerie. Otto followed their gaze.

"You’re joking," he said.

Harry shrugged, but couldn’t keep the grin off his face.

"Now who’s mooning?" said Vincent.

Harry gave him a shove that nearly toppled David as well. Both boys laughed.

"Caught yourself a regular at last," said Vincent, then launched into an explanation of all the economic advantages such an arrangement had to offer. Harry nodded along politely.

Vincent was right, of course, but Harry could hardly hear him over the warm feeling in his chest that came with knowing he was Freddie’s favorite.

 

* * *

 

 

"What happened to your head?" Harry blurted out before he could stop himself. It wasn’t a particularly romantic greeting, but the sight of Freddie with half his skull swathed in white linen was enough to startle anybody.

Freddie wouldn’t say, claimed he had to protect his sources and couldn’t spoil the story before it went to press.

"Does it hurt?" said Harry.

"Hardly," Freddie scoffed. "Itches like hellfire, though."

"Poor bugger," said Harry, his hand trailing down Freddie’s front and his lips following.

A few weeks later, the bandages were off. Freddie’d combed his hair down over what the linen had covered. If Harry hadn’t been looking for it, he might never have noticed anything was amiss, the Harlequin’s rooms being dimly-lit at best.

As Freddie leaned in to kiss him, Harry brushed back the hair covering the wound. Even in the dark, he got a good view of a gaping hole, crusted red and black around the edges. The expert stitching did nothing to mitigate the violence of it, the realization that a part of Freddie had been ripped off.

Harry quickly hid his horror behind a smile, but not quick enough. Freddie’s face fell.

"We don’t have to—" he started.

"No, it’s fine," said Harry. "It’s just… bit of a shock, is all."

Freddie forced a smile to match Harry’s. It looked nearly as bad as the wound. Harry kissed it away.

The next time they met, Freddie had a pair of spectacles holding up his new porcelain ear.

"Didn’t know your eyes were so bad as that," said Harry. "S’pose it comes from reading all that small type in the dark."

He reached up to remove the spectacles, intending to set them aside, but Freddie caught his hands and kissed his fingers before pulling them back down to the level of his chest.

Freddie kept the spectacles on the whole time, and every time after that. It made kissing damned awkward, and Harry didn’t relish the feeling of the unyielding porcelain against his cheek, but every time he told Freddie he didn’t care about his stupid lopsided head, Freddie only gave him that sad little smile.

Harry supposed it was difficult to listen with just one ear.

 

* * *

 

 

News of Otto’s death spread through the ranks of the telegraph boys as quick as any message over the wires. In its wake, confusion bubbled up into a froth of fear. A few boys tried to refuse the assignments Luke gave them. He fired one of them on the spot and the rest fell into line.

Harry, for his part, was given only telegrams, and left the GPO in time to crash headlong into Vincent heading past on the street.

"You’ve heard the news?" said Harry.

"Yeah," Vincent said, staring down the street rather than looking Harry in the eye.

"Where you headed?" said Harry. It was possible their routes might coincide, and they could walk together for a ways. Safety in numbers and all that.

"Meeting Freddie," said Vincent--an unusually terse response from the lad Freddie described as “our loquacious friend.” Harry’s own eyes narrowed.

"You know something," said Harry.

"Which is why I need to see Freddie," said Vincent. "Now."

"Tell me what’s going on."

"I can’t," said Vincent. He had the decency to look pained by it, at least, which quelled Harry’s anger somewhat.

"Then the least you can do is pass on a message," said Harry.

"I don’t have time––"

"It’s the same as a bloody telegram. You telling me you don’t have time to do your job?"

Vincent let out a frustrated huff of breath. “Make it quick.”

Harry scrambled for a pencil and a blank scrap of paper, then stopped, the tip of the lead poised against the parchment. He could practically hear Freddie’s voice in his head.

"Never put anything down in writing that could be used against you," he’d said, taking a casual drag from his cigarette, his arm curled around Harry’s shoulders, Harry’s head on his bare chest. "God knows I’ve brought more chicanery to light thanks to that particular brand of carelessness."

In the present, Harry swallowed hard, thought harder, and wrote:

_Am fine. Meet at usual place. Your friend._

Even “friend” was a risk, but Harry had to put down something to express what Freddie meant to him, what he hoped he meant to Freddie.

He folded up the paper with sharp corners and thrust it into Vincent’s hand. Vincent pocketed it, touched the brim of his cap, and strode off.

 

* * *

 

 

Harry finished his deliveries in record time and immediately fled to the Harlequin, not even bothering to change out of his uniform. As he waited for Freddie in the alley outside, chewing the skin around his fingernails, it occured to him that this might very well be the stupidest plan ever cooked up by anybody in the history of the world. A telegraph boy returning to the scene of another telegraph boy’s murder, after dark, not even a full day after the crime. Was Otto’s body yet cold? Bile rose in Harry’s throat at the thought, and he swallowed it back down along with the tears that gathered in the corners of his eyes.

"Harry?"

Harry jumped away from the wall, his arms coming up in front of him, his hands forming fists at eye-level.

"What the devil are you doing out here?" hissed his assailant.

It took a while for Harry to recognize the voice over the sound of his own pulse thudding in his ears.

"Freddie?" he said.

He couldn’t see Freddie’s face—the light from the streetlamp not quite penetrating the omnipresent fog, much less reaching the alley—but the sigh spoke of raised eyebrows and a fond half-smile. Harry relaxed.

"Get inside," said Freddie. "You’ll catch your death out here."

They took the staircase together, Freddie in the lead, to the same room they’d haunted hundreds of times before. Not the same one Otto’d been murdered in, thank god.

Harry wanted to grab Freddie by his shirtfront the moment the door was shut, but instead he retreated to the corner of the room to divest himself of his uniform as Freddie removed his own coat and hat. Freddie was always finicky about his clothes; no reason to expect tonight would be any different.

Freddie reached the bed before Harry, sat on it with his waistcoat undone, his shirt-collar loose. He threw back a shot of gin and cast a considering eye over Harry.

"Come here," he said, jerking his head at the empty spot beside him.

Harry wordlessly obeyed. It was a relief to be told what to do after a day of not knowing where he stood. He sat beside Freddie, their knees touching, took Freddie’s hand and put it on his thigh. Freddie, in turn, brought Harry’s hand to his lips.

"I was worried sick, Harry," he said.

It wasn’t the most comforting thing in the world to hear, that Freddie was just as scared as Harry or any of the lads. Even worse was the look on Freddie’s face, the smirk replaced with a fearful frown.

Well. Harry knew how to take care of that.

He put a hand on Freddie’s cheek, his fingertips brushing the porcelain ear, and drew Freddie into a deep kiss. Freddie thus distracted, it was easy to push his shirt and waistcoat off his shoulders, toss them behind him onto the floor. Freddie’s own hands snaked under Harry’s shirt and drew it up. Both he and Harry were reluctant to pull away long enough to get it over Harry’s head, but they did. Freddie cupped Harry’s jaw in his palm as their lips joined again. His hand trailed down to rest on the side of Harry’s neck as he gently pushed Harry down to the bed.

Their coupling was desperate, both men gasping and trembling throughout, hardly a word spoken, the kind of fucking that came with the realization that death lurked not even two doors down. They lay entwined for over an hour afterwards, back-to-front, Freddie’s leanly muscled arms curling around Harry’s shoulders and chest, his lips pressing occasionally to the back of Harry’s neck. All was silence save for their breathing and the noise of the street that filtered in through the paper-thin walls.

"What did Vincent tell you?" Harry asked at last, his voice barely above a whisper.

"Nothing," Freddie murmured in his ear. "Nothing intelligible, anyway. Nothing for you to worry about."

"I’ll worry anyway," said Harry.

Freddie nuzzled Harry’s neck in reply and tightened his hold around Harry’s chest. Harry wished he’d never let him go.

 

* * *

 

 

If Otto’s death had been an electric shock, then Vincent’s was a freight train. Two boys quit on the spot. Harry sent a telegram to the Star.

It took him ages to word it right, to strike a balance between the sick fear in his stomach, the desperate desire to be safe in Freddie’s arms, and the absolute demands of secrecy. In the end, he had four words:

_NEED TO SEE YOU_

He sent them off via one of the other remaining boys, a lad too new to have visited the Harlequin, whose name Harry could hardly remember. Tom or Todd or something like that. He would have used more familiar means, but Otto and Vincent were de––were gone, and David had been taken by the police.

Days passed, and David failed to reappear. Harry wondered if he was dead as well.

There was no reply from Freddie. Harry accosted the boy he’d given the message to, shoved him against the wall in the alley behind the GPO and demanded to know whether the telegram had been delivered, no lies, did he know what Luke would do to him if Harry told him a telegram had gone missing? The lad paled and stuttered, and Harry nearly hit him in the face for his stupidity, but two other boys pulled him off, took him aside, warned him against stirring the pot––there weren’t that many telegraph boys left anymore, he couldn’t afford to be scaring off the new ones, Luke wouldn’t stand for it. Harry shoved them away, but he knew they were right.

He waited another week. In the interim, the Star published an article on the sentencing to death by hanging of one James Self, who’d confessed to the murders of two telegraph boys and one banker, “for reasons spiteful and indecent.” Freddie’s byline stood at the top of the article in black and white, proud as ever.

Harry delivered his second telegram to the Star offices himself, put it in the hands of Freddie’s assistant, made it understood that the message was urgent. It was a struggle not to leave the office at a run, to await the reply at his dismal flat.

He may as well have kept wandering the streets of Whitechapel—the reply never came.


End file.
